Julie Gichuru is not asking for peace

In 2004 my father died, leaving us to the mercy of our neighbor who detested us with all his being. The hatred brew to a point where in April 2007 it blew into violence. Details aside, the violence got two of my brothers and I arrested and confined into a filthy police cell for five days – Sunday night to Friday morning. After our release from the police cell the community at KIA (currently KSG) ensured that we live in peace – but since up to today none in our family can see that former neighbor eye to eye, what was brokered as peace was not peace – but something Julie Gichuru is asking for.

The peace that Julie Gichuru is asking is the type of peace that the KIA community brokered between our family and the neighbor – an understanding that no matter the differences we had, we would never again pick up weapons and fight each other. The peace brokerage did not care to resolve the causes of the disagreements, that probably someone needed to offer an apology, or a restitution. That probably there was a need to live in peace starting then moving into the future. The community only cared that we live as far from each other as possible. What they wanted was calm neighborhood at KIA.

The peace Julie Gichuru is calling for is this same “calm” that KIA community badly needed.  Google defines calm as an action “not showing or feeling nervousness, anger, or other emotions.” With this definition, one can assume that if a person is angered, the person can be asked to be calm by hiding his/her anger so that on the surface he can appear not to show or feel nervousness, anger, or other emotions. Thus, if there is a reason for Kenyans to be angry, to be nervous, to be emotional over any form of injustice that may have been experienced in the past, Julie Gichuru is asking us to tactfully hide them so as to appear peaceful.

Peace, far from calm, would require dealing with the cause of turbulence. Whoever seeks peace would foremost ask, “why aren’t we peaceful?” Once the problem has been found, a solution to the problem would be sought, then implemented. It is the aftermath of the implementation of the solution to the problem that would be rightly be referred to as peace. This is because Google defines peace as “freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility.” Wikiquote explains;

Peace is an occurrence of harmony characterized by the lack of violence, conflict behaviors and the freedom from fear of violence. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility and retribution, peace also suggests sincere attempts at reconciliation, the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the establishment of equality, and a working political order that serves the true interests of all

If Julie Gichuru was truly interested in peace, she could have asked us to wholeheartedly search for the reasons why we are not at peace. As David Ndii noted during his interview with Ann Kiguta on Citizen’s Opinion Court, Kenyans are always one elections away from civil strife, and the reason is simple – the country as refused to face historical injustices head on with intentions of resolving them amicably.

The historical injustice range from Kikuyus being displaced from their ancestral lands both by the white settlers and oligarch’s who took power shortly after independence, inter community fightings mostly for capital control, neglect and discrimination of many communities/regions by the four national governments, political assassinations and extrajudicial killings, to elections related violences. For the post election violence especially that of 2007/2008, the injustice underlying the injustice was electoral malpractice.

Kenyans killed each other in 2007/2008 because the elections were rigged. Other than the failure to address the rigging, none of the participants in the PEV have been arrested and jailed. Not the funders, not the hired hooligans. On the rigging part, not all the loopholes that allowed for the massive rigging in 2007 have been sealed. As we speak, there are issues with the IEBC register that is possibly containing up to one million dead voters. The dead voters could not have been an issue if the manual backup law was not passed by parliament, manual backup that allows for someone who cannot be identified electronically to go ahead and vote, as long as/her name is in the register – doesn’t matter whether he/she is dead or alive.

It is therefore clear that although we could appear peaceful right now, that although we can maintain this appearance of peace post 2017 general elections, what we have and will have is far from peace. Not until what causes us to hate each other based on the native languages we speak or the part of the country our ancestors were born in are properly addressed, not until our democracy and constitution are respected by whoever is or wants to be in power, we will never have peace – not the type of peace anyone who preaches peace longs for – not the type of peace Julie Gichuru is preaching.